Crucible

by James Rollins

  Eve looked about her garden, her arm raised as if to erase this illusion, too. Instead, she lowered her limb and left everything in place.

  “It’s comforting,” was all she said.

  Mara leaned closer to the speaker. “Eve, we must move your hardware. To do that safely, I’m going to be sending you into low-power mode. The built-in batteries—”

  “—will keep my vital systems functioning. Understood.”

  Mara noted how quickly Eve had responded, even cutting her off. Eve’s gaze moved absently here and there, clearly distracted. No, not distracted . . . bored. Mara imagined this conversation must be intolerably slow to a being whose synapses were powered by lasers, who could think at lightning speeds.

  “Tell her what she needs to know,” Monk pressed. “We have to be packed up and out of here in three minutes.”

  She nodded.

  We also don’t want Eve bored any longer than necessary.

  3:55 P.M.

  With the deadline fast approaching, Monk led Mara across an open-air square in the center of Madrid. Plaza Mayor was only a short walk from their hotel, but he breathed heavily. His prosthetic hand was clamped tightly to the titanium case that held the idling Xénese device. His heart pounded in his ears, readying for what was to come.

  He kept forcing away images of Harriet, of his little daughter being tortured.

  I can’t let that happen.

  Mara kept to his side, her leather messenger bag over one shoulder. She had left the padded valise with her hard drives back at the room. With everything already uploaded into Eve, she hadn’t put up any fuss about abandoning them for now.

  Plus, Valya hadn’t asked for them, so Monk wasn’t handing them over. If nothing else, he could use them as an ace up his sleeve if the negotiations turned sour.

  As he headed across the square, Monk kept an eye on his surroundings, knowing that Russian witch likely had spies already on the ground, watching them even now. But any attempt to pick out those spies was futile.

  The plaza bustled with people, all bundled in heavy winter coats that could hide an arsenal. Further confounding matters, a majority of the square was occupied by the tents and stalls of a Christmas market. With the holiday over, everything appeared to be marked at fire-sale prices, drawing throngs of bargain seekers.

  The entire enterprise had a sullen depressing look to it. The pristine snow covering the tile rooftops had been trudged to a gray sludge underfoot. Several spaces were already packing and closing up shop for the season.

  The place certainly matched Monk’s gloomy mood.

  The square itself was surrounded on all sides by identical red-brick buildings roofed in blue-gray slate. Three upper stories sat atop a slew of restaurants, shops, and cafés, while larger archways opened to the surrounding streets. A few taller steeples—marking clock towers and belfries—climbed taller into the crisp blue sky.

  Monk paused with Mara under the cold stare of a green-patinaed bronze statue of King Philip III, seated atop an equally dour horse.

  He pointed ahead, to one of the buildings with shuttered windows. It looked like it was under renovation.

  “That should be the place over there,” he said, then turned to her. “You can still stay out here. I can do this myself.”

  Mara swallowed, clearly considering it. “No,” she finally decided. “If there’s any problem with Eve, any troubleshooting, I should be there.” She stepped away. “Let’s go.”

  Monk felt a touch of admiration for her, as much for her bravery as her stubbornness. He had known her for less than a day, but he could see how much tougher she had become, recognizing the steel developing in her backbone. She was no longer the frightened computer geek he had first met.

  As they reached the front of the building, Monk took the lead, especially as a door opened ahead of them.

  Definitely been watching us.

  The doorman was a dead-eyed brute with a scar splitting his chin. He wore a puffy down-filled coat. As he waved them through, Monk caught a glimpse of a shoulder holster. Once inside the vestibule, they were confronted by another guard who patted them down before allowing them up a dark stair.

  Here we go.

  As they climbed, another gunman had been posted at each landing. The two at the door hadn’t brandished weapons, likely cautious of being spotted from the square outside. Up here, there were no such reservations. The first guard had a pistol in hand; the next manned a sniper rifle pointed through a gap in a boarded-up window.

  Monk imagined this assassin following their path across the plaza, the weapon’s sight fixed to his head. He suppressed a shudder.

  Valya was definitely not taking any chances.

  The final landing at the top was guarded by two men carrying stubby assault rifles. One guard broke off and led them down a hall to a closed door. Their escort rapped his knuckles on it and spat in Russian.

  The door opened, and the two were ushered inside. Mara kept at his heels, bumping into him in her haste to get away from the armed men. Apparently, that steel in her spine hadn’t fully tempered yet.

  As Monk entered, he took stock of his surroundings with one glance. The room was stripped of wallpaper, with pieces still stuck to the lath-and-plaster. Underfoot was freshly laid subfloor. The only exit—a single window—had been boarded up like all the others. With the sun on the other side of the square, a few slits of light cut through gaps in the boards, illuminating air heavy with dust motes.

  The only other light was a lamp pole standing next to a wooden table.

  One of the room’s two occupants was bent over a laptop. He was lanky, with disheveled brown hair and thick black glasses. Next to his elbow was a case full of coiled cables, small meters, tiny screwdrivers.

  Clearly Valya’s tech expert.

  The other man in the room was a bear—a Russian bear from his close-cropped blond hair and cold blue eyes. If there was any doubt to his homeland, the man had stripped to a T-shirt, oblivious to the cold in the unheated room. A red sickle-and-hammer tattoo stood out prominently on his exposed bicep.

  Further confirming his nationality was the military-issue pistol in his hand, a Russian MP-443 Grach—also known as a Rook.

  It seemed Valya had come to play chess.

  Monk lifted his case.

  Then it’s good that I brought a queen of my own.

  4:18 P.M.

  As Mara finished setting up her Xénese device, she tried to imagine how this would all end. She eyed the boarded-up windows, knowing how thoroughly they were trapped. She pictured the square outside. She had visited the plaza once before, during her trip to Madrid with Eliza. As they shared tapas, the librarian had told her how witches were burned in this square, often in great spectacles with multiple pyres aflame.

  She remembered Eliza’s words, sad but determined: Women of intelligence have always been persecuted. We will end that one day.

  But unfortunately, that wouldn’t be today.

  Mara expected to suffer the same fate as those witches of the past.

  To distract herself, she eavesdropped on the two men in the room. They spoke quietly in Russian, not aware she understood every word. She listened to their rude comments, their derisive chuckles. The bigger man—Nikolaev—suggested lewd ways to make her cooperate, which earned a lascivious smile from his tech partner.

  Screw you all.

  A few minutes ago, their chatter had briefly quieted when Monk first opened the case, revealing the softly glowing Xénese device in low-power mode. As she hooked it to her laptop, Kalinin, the computer expert, kept a close eye on her work, all but breathing down her neck, smelling of garlic and bad hygiene.

  She did not rush, making sure all the calibrations were correct before powering Eve back on.

  Kalinin was clearly losing patience. “Glupaya shlyuha,” he complained to Nikolaev, calling her a stupid whore. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  Mara was accustomed to such derision from male colleagues. As in
the past, she would let her work do the speaking for her. Once satisfied, she typed in the proper code to return Eve to her full glory.

  On the floor, the Xénese device flared brilliantly to life.

  Caught by surprise, Kalinin stumbled back a step and covered his face with an arm, as if fearful the device might explode.

  Mara looked over and sneered. “Mu-dak.”

  Shithead.

  His face reddened, whether out of embarrassment at his reaction or shock that she spoke Russian.

  He strode forward and pushed her out of his way.

  “Careful how you handle the lady, bub,” Monk warned.

  Nikolaev came forward, weapon raised, ready to intercede, but then Eve and her garden appeared on her laptop.

  All eyes turned toward her creation.

  Even Monk gasped.

  On the screen, Eve had transformed yet again. She had shed her clothing, her nakedness now obscured by a silvery coating that shimmered and flowed, like a storm-fed river in moonlight. Her face remained Mara’s mother, only far more glorious, her eyes shining like black diamonds.

  Monk glanced over to Mara, his face uneasy: What the hell?

  She gave the tiniest shrug, knowing that any overt concern might throw off this deal. She had only one explanation. Eve must have learned how to continue her processing under low power. Normally when her hardware idled, she went dormant. She had clearly devised ways to operate more efficiently. Even during the short walk over here, Eve had leaped forward—dramatically so.

  Still, Mara kept her reaction muted. She waved to Kalinin and spoke in Russian, further proving her fluency. “Inspect everything.”

  Kalinin didn’t have to be told twice, his lust bright, but this time directed at Eve.

  Mara kept watch, making sure he didn’t damage anything.

  After several minutes, Monk grew impatient and pressured Nikolaev, too. “See, everything’s fine. Now I want to speak to your boss.”

  Nikolaev shrugged and pulled out an e-tablet. He opened it with a thumbprint, then propped it upright on the table, angled toward the computer.

  After several seconds of delay, a videoconference call connected and a woman’s face appeared on the screen. She looked like a ghost, with white-blond hair and pale skin. Her only blemish was a prominent tattoo of a black sun covering one cheek.

  Monk stepped closer. His lips had thinned to hard lines, his jaw muscles prominently protruding.

  Mara got out of his way.

  Even Nikolaev retreated, still covering him with a pistol.

  Monk leaned closer. “Valya . . . we had a deal.”

  4:30 P.M.

  Monk picked up the tablet and turned its small screen fully at the technician inspecting the Xénese device. “You can see I met my end of the bargain. So free my daughter and Seichan.”

  “And if I refuse?” Valya asked, testing him. “What will you do?”

  Monk had been prepared for this. “I had Mara enter an abort code, a kill switch. It’s timed to engage at seventeen hundred hours. The deadline you gave to me. Thirty minutes from now it will scrub this entire system. Only I know the code to stop it. So, either you show me live footage of Harriet and Seichan being delivered somewhere safe and sound, or I do absolutely nothing and you lose everything.”

  This was a lie, a bluff.

  Before coming here, he had tried to convince Mara of this plan, but she had refused. She still believed Eve was too important to the world, especially with that other device still on the loose. Plus, Mara trusted that Eve in her current state would refuse to be a slave to a new master.

  From the way Eve looked on the screen right now, Monk didn’t doubt that.

  So, he played his best hand and shrugged. “It’s your move, Valya.”

  His opponent remained expressionless as she considered her next words carefully. Time stretched. The lamp pole flickered as if sensing Monk’s anxiety and impatience.

  When Valya finally spoke, her words were directed at the tech. “Kalinin, have you completed your analysis of Ms. Silviera’s device?”

  The tech straightened, lifting aloft a heavy scanner that took two hands to hold. He had been passing it back and forth over the Xénese device. “Da.”

  “And you are confident you’ve captured a full schematic?”

  Kalinin stepped over to his own laptop and tapped several buttons, then a window opened showing a detailed three-dimensional representation of Mara’s device. “Da,” he confirmed.

  Monk felt his stomach dropping.

  “Then we can wait the thirty minutes out,” Valya said. “In the end, I can be satisfied with this schematic. I’m sure my people could reproduce the device. So, you either type in the cancellation code and deliver what you promised . . . or I will be sharing the live footage that you demanded. But I don’t imagine you will enjoy the show.”

  She finally smiled. “Your move.”

  So much for my bluff.

  He tried another tactic. “If I do as you ask, will you let them go?”

  “Considering what you just tried to do, I believe I will keep them. They may prove to be useful again.”

  Monk remembered Jason warning of this exact same scenario.

  I’m sorry, Harriet.

  He knew the odds were against a favorable outcome, but he had to try.

  Resigned that Valya would never keep her word, he stepped over to Mara’s laptop. Still, holding the e-tablet with the smug countenance of that pale bitch on it, he reached out with one hand, but instead of typing, he spoke a simple command.

  Two words.

  “Now, Eve.”

  4:33 P.M.

  On this signal, Mara snatched the tablet from Monk and dropped to the floor. She curled into a ball as a transformer blew outside the boarded-up window. It sounded like a grenade had been tossed against the building. Glass shattered into the room, one of the boards cracked, and the room went dark.

  Even her Xénese device dimmed to stand-down mode as its power was cut.

  But Eve had done her job.

  Monk reacted at the same time as her. Mara never imagined the stocky man could move so quickly. In that single stunned moment, he lunged to Nikolaev, grabbed the man’s wrist, and crushed the bones with one squeeze of his prosthesis.

  The Russian screamed and dropped the pistol.

  Monk caught it in midair with his free hand and swung it around to face Kalinin. “Move, you die.”

  Pain drove Nikolaev to his knees. Monk let go of his wrist, punched him in the nose, then latched on to his neck with his bone-crushing prosthesis. He forced the gasping Russian onto his back, then dropped a knee onto his chest, holding him there.

  Kalinin used this opportunity to rush for the door, either in a panic to escape or to summon the reinforcements waiting outside. Either way, he took two steps and his head exploded.

  Mara gasped.

  She hadn’t even heard a shot.

  His body crumpled to the floor near Monk, who still held his confiscated pistol. But it was pointed at the door and remained unfired. She glanced to the window, noting a pane of glass still in its frame topple to the floor. A crisp bullet hole penetrated it.

  A sniper must have shot through a gap in the boards.

  Out in the hall, an ear-shattering bang made her jump, followed by a flash of light so bright it outlined the door frame.

  Then a spate of gunfire.

  She smelled something stinging in the air.

  Another brief burst of rifle fire.

  Then silence.

  “Stay down,” Monk warned. “They’re cleaning up out there.”

  “Who—?”

  “Cavalry.” Monk returned his attention to the Russian still gripped by the throat. Monk lowered his face until he was nose-to-nose, spittle flecking his lips. “Now, comrade, you’re going to tell me where your boss is holed up.”

  4:35 P.M.

  Monk released his grip enough for Nikolaev to shake his head. The Russian’s eyes bugged out from the pr
essure, his face purpling.

  “Don’t know . . .” Nikolaev gasped out.

  Let’s see how truthful you’re being.

  Monk tightened his hold, synthetic fingers digging deep into his prisoner’s neck. The sensitive prosthesis felt the panicked beat of the man’s carotid.

  “Once again, comrade. Same question.”

  He forced the man’s head to the side, to stare toward Kalinin’s shattered face. The sniper had tapped him cleanly in the back of the head. The exit wound out the front was grisly.

  “Do you want to end up like him?”

  Nikolaev squirmed as Monk faced him again. The Russian’s eyes were huge, panicked. As Monk watched, capillaries in the whites of his eyes burst from blood pressure pounding into the man’s skull, trapped there by the crush of prosthetic fingers.

  “Do you know where Valya Mikhailov is?” He loosened his hold slightly. “Or anything that can help us find her.”

  Tears rolled from the man’s eyes, snot from his nose.

  “Ny . . . nyet. Nothing. I . . . I swear.”

  Monk squeezed again, even harder, too hard. He accidentally clamped the man’s carotids closed. The Russian’s eyes rolled back into his head, his lids drooping as he passed out.

  Monk had not meant that to happen.

  In fact, he believed the man.

  Nikolaev clearly didn’t know anything. Likely no one here did. Valya was too cautious, paranoid. She would never give away her position unless absolutely necessary.

  Monk gritted his teeth in frustration. He had known from the beginning that this gambit was a long shot. After Valya called him aboard the F-15, he had contacted Painter Crowe, informed him of that bitch’s private offer to him. The director had tried to trace the call, but it led nowhere.

  She remained a ghost in the ether.

  In order to pin that ghost down, Painter had suggested what could help, what they ultimately needed: a piece of the enemy’s encrypted hardware, specifically something used to contact Valya. If they could acquire such a device, the director believed that with luck and the help of an expert forensics team, they might be able to learn more about her whereabouts.